The Jackson Hole Writers Conference has added a poetry track to its June 26-29 event at the Arts Center in Jackson.
Christopher Merrill, one of the most respected poets and teachers in the U.S., "will add a wonderful dimension to an already great conference,” said JHWC co-coordinator Tim Sandlin. Local cowboy poet David Kornblum is sponsoring the new poetry track.
Merrill has published four collections of poetry, including “Brilliant Water” and “Watch Fire,” for which he received the Peter I. B. Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets; translations of Aleš Debeljak’s “Anxious Moments” and “The City and the Child”; several edited volumes, among them “The Forgotten Language: Contemporary Poets and Nature” and “From the Faraway Nearby: Georgia O’Keeffe as Icon;" and four books of nonfiction. He directs the International Writing Program at The University of Iowa.
Other poets joining the faculty this year are Leah Shlachter. whose poetry has appeared in “The Owen Wister Review,” “Bamboo Ridge” and the Jackson Hole News and Guide; and Cecily Parks, author of “Field Folly Snow,” soon to be published by the University of Georgia Press, and “Cold Work,” winner the 2005 Poetry Society of America New York Chapbook Fellowship. Parks' work also has appeared in “Best New Poets 2007.”
FMI: www.jacksonholewritersconference.com
